Desert meets caverns

By Kathleen Scott, For the Express-News :
May 30, 2013
: Updated: June 2, 2013 5:17pm

Delicate formations called soda straws cover the ceiling of the Papoose Room in the Kings Palace section of Carlsbad Caverns, first explored by a cowboy in 1898.

Visitors may enter the caverns through a natural entrance, where evenings from May to October they also can watch the bats emerge.

Burrowing owls live in the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in the town of Carlsbad, N.M.

Photo By Special to the Express-News

A one-mile path for self-guided tours winds around The Big Room, a cavern about the size of 14 football fields that holds countless formations at Carlsbad Caverns. (THIS IS THE CORRECT CUTLINE FOR THIS PHOTO. TSB 5/17/13

Photo By Special to the Express-News

Native desert plants are arranged by habitat at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Carlbad, N.M.

Photo By Special to the Express-News

Visitors stop to admire a pool and formations in the Queens Chamber, one of four caverns of the guided Kings Palace tour at Carlsbad Caverns.

Where to stay: Trinity Hotel, 201 S. Canal St., Carlsbad, thetrinityhotel.com or 575-234-9891. Multiple other lodgings at carlsbadchamber.com, click Lodging. Make reservations well in advance; Carlsbad has high hotel occupancy.

A half-day's drive northwest of San Antonio is a land that looks like another planet. Clay-brown and wind-trimmed, the desert plains of southern New Mexico stretch from the car windows to the horizon. Towns are few and dusty until you roll into Carlsbad, where the Pecos River waters a greenbelt.

Most visitors come to Carlsbad for a day at spectacular Carlsbad Caverns. In-the-know travelers also tour a desert zoo and garden, sleep in a restored 1892 bank building and dine on local dishes flavored by piquant New Mexico chiles.

Exploration deep into Carlsbad Cavern began in 1898 when a cowboy named Jim White, who was looking for strays late one afternoon, saw a column of smoke rise, split and swirl above the Guadalupe Mountains. When he took a closer look, he realized the column was actually thousands of bats pouring from a dark hole at the base of a fractured limestone hill.

A few days later he returned to the hole with a ladder lashed from sticks and rope, and a lantern he made from a coffeepot filled with kerosene. What he saw when he lowered himself into the opening sparked a lifelong passion. He went on to discover 19 miles of cave passageways.

Today, tours begin at the visitor's center, from which travelers can either ride an elevator down 750 feet or walk 1¼ miles from a natural surface opening. During daylight hours in late spring and summer, cave swallows swoop around the opening. Toward sundown from May through October, a large population of bats emerges.

More than 118 caverns lie within the park's boundaries. Two of the most popular are the Big Room and Kings Palace, extensive multichamber caverns holding an untold number of stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies and other formations, many of which are still growing. Artful illumination highlights formations in these caverns; paved paths encircle both areas.

The Big Room is said to be the largest cavern in the Western Hemisphere, with a floor measuring approximately 8 acres and a ceiling in some places about 23 stories high. The visitor path is a mile long and designed for self-guided touring.

One of the Big Room's features, named by explorers as an aid to navigation, is the Rock of Ages, which appears to touch floor and ceiling, a mammoth multistory union of ivory and gold rock upon which elegant straws, curtains and ripples materialized over the ages as minerals solidified into stone from water droplets.

The mile-long ranger-led tour of Kings Palace descends to 830 feet beneath the surface, the deepest portion of the cavern open to the public, and leads through four chambers. In the Papoose Room, long, thin strands of rock hang from the ceiling like masses of lacy icicles. The Queen's Chamber holds columns and stalagmites rising from the floor like the trunks of giant carved trees and thousands of intricate stalactites descend from above.

Back in the town of Carlsbad, phenomena of another sort may be seen at Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park. Following a paved path from the Visitors Center, guests get an up-close look at flora and fauna native to the Chihuahua Desert, discovering habitats such as arroyo, piñon juniper and uplands planted with vegetation native to each region. A number of plants common in San Antonio are represented in the gardens.

More than 40 species of desert animals live in the zoo, most because of an inability to survive in the wild. The aviary holds a bald eagle and a golden eagle as well as burrowing owls, roadrunners and other birds. An ivory-colored albino rattlesnake curls up in the reptile display. In open habitat enclosures, javelina snooze in the sun, bobcats prowl among trees and prairie dogs pop from burrows.

When it's time to refresh, the Trinity Hotel offers a trifecta of comfort in a restored historic downtown building. One of the owners grows and makes several fine varietal wines, sold in the hotel's gift shop. The restaurant features Italian-oriented comfort food, including lasagna in which chicken and a béchamel sauce spiked with green chiles bring New Mexico flavor to the table. Lucky travelers spend the night in one of nine gorgeously furnished rooms and suites, including Room 206 which has a private media room in the old bank vault.

In exchange for a six-hour drive from San Antonio, travelers will find an escape to ethereal underground beauty, interesting desert life and the comfort of a boutique hotel; pleasures that make the routines of life feel a world away.